Remember how on just Monday I told you that I was avoiding wheat because it made me feel “bloated, gassy, and achy?” Yeah, well, when I was shopping on Sunday, apparently, I forgot.

Actually, I didn’t forget. I was careless.

One of my favorite breakfasts is a bowl of hot cereal with mashed banana, milled flax seed, chia seeds and cinnamon. Most of the time, that hot cereal is steel cut oats; however, when my sister visited in June, she left a bag of Bob’s Red Mill 8 Grain Wheatless cereal and I really like it. I like it and I’m out of it. The logical thing, then, is to buy some more when I’m shopping on Sunday, right? And that’s what I thought I did.

Except I didn’t.

I mistakenly picked up a bag of Bob’s Red Mill Old Country Style Muesli. Guess what the first ingredient is. Whole grain wheat. Guess what the eighth ingredient is. Whole grain triticale (wheat). And because I’m just that pig-headed, I made a big bowl and ate it anyway.

To quote Pretty Woman Vivian Ward: “Big mistake. Huge!”

A couple of hours later, I almost felt like I was having a heart attack. I’ve heard that one symptom of a heart attack is that if feels like an elephant is sitting on your chest. Well, I didn’t have an elephant on my chest, I had a rapidly expanding balloon in my chest. I’m completely serious when I tell you that it hurt to breathe and that I could not take a deep breath. With the Macy’s Day parade float filling in my thorax, there was just no room for my lungs to expand. The discomfort and occasional twinges of acute pain where so disruptive that I actually had to leave work.

Yes, you read that right. I had to take sick time because of cereal.

Now, as I told you some time ago, my sister discovered last year that her knees hurt more when she eats wheat. Then, a couple of months ago, I told you that I had found that I suffer similar (though less severe) symptoms when I eat wheat myself. My hands and feet swell. My knees and feet hurt, and I feel bloated. I’ve done a little experimenting here and there to see if those symptoms hold true anytime I eat wheat and they do. However, I have never had a reaction like I did yesterday.

And I won’t have it again.

I’m pig-headed about a lot of things, I’ll admit that freely. However, I’m no so pig-headed that I’m going to put myself in that kind of pain again. I don’t buy a lot of processed food; however, from this point forward, I will read the labels of the processed food I do buy far more carefully. Shop in haste, repent in leisure. And, honey! Do I ever repent?!

So. Now I have this nearly full bag of Bob’s Muesli. Any takers?